Washington— The Republican National Committee asked Supreme Court there is to continue the decision of the high court of the country that said the election officials should count the ballots temporarily cast by voters whose ballots were rejected because they were returned without secret envelopes.
The emergency aid request requested by Republicans is the second involving the 2024 election filed with the Supreme Court on Monday. Earlier in the day, Virginia officials asked the high court in order to move forward by removing approximately 1,600 people deemed non-citizens from the state’s voter rolls.
Both requests for the intervention of the Supreme Court came more than a week before Election Day and because millions of voters across the country had already cast their ballots early, either in person or by mail. In Pennsylvania, more than 2 million ballots have been requested, and about 1.4 million have been returned, according to the University of Florida Election Lab.
Pennsylvania is a key state that could decide whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump wins the White House. Republicans warned that if the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision is upheld, “tens of thousands” of provisional votes could be counted. In the 2020 election, when many states made it easier to vote by mail due to the COVID-19 pandemic, about 1% of ballots returned in Pennsylvania were rejected because they did not have a secret envelope, according to an analysis from MIT Elections. Data and Science Lab.
Republicans said that if the judge determines that it remains unsecured, he should order the provisional ballots cast by voters with damaged ballots to be set aside and, if counted, to be counted separately and not included in the official vote count. a legal battle unfolds.
“This case is of great public importance, potentially affecting tens of thousands of votes in a state that many anticipate could be decisive for control of the US Senate or even the 2024 presidential election,” the Republican attorney wrote. “Whether an important election is to be conducted according to rules established by the General Assembly or according to the will of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is an important constitutional question which must be addressed directly in this court.”
The Pennsylvania case arose after the state’s primary election in April, when two voters from Butler County mailed out ballots but failed to put them in secret envelopes. The state also requires voters to sign and date the mailing envelopes containing the ballots. Failure to comply with these requirements renders the ballot invalid.
Because voters returned ballots without secret envelopes, they were notified by the Butler County Board of Elections that their votes could not be counted and were advised to cast a provisional ballot during the voting process, which both voters did.
But the county board of elections did not count the provisional ballots. After learning of the rejection, the voters sued in state court, arguing that the board had wrongly rejected the ballot. The court disagreed, finding that the state’s election code prohibits individuals who submit ballots that are “timely received” from counting their provisional ballots. A voter’s mistake in returning a ballot was not found to be an acceptable reason for counting a provisional ballot.
But voters won before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, which ruled in a 4-3 decision that the Board of Elections must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail ballots were rejected due to the lack of secret envelopes.
While the dispute involved voters from Butler County, the Pennsylvania Department of State issued guidance last week stating that provisional ballots can be issued when voters return completed ballots that will be rejected and voters believe they are eligible to vote.
Republicans asked the Supreme Court to suspend the ruling from Pennsylvania’s highest court, warning that if it stands, the county board “will be forced to ignore the clear mandate of the Election Code and count provisional ballots sent on Election Day by mailers broken voice.”
He also argued that the state Supreme Court erred in changing the rules on mail-in elections after they began and close to Election Day.
